Purpose and Anticipated Outcomes

Purpose
To help community foundations enhance and develop their knowledge, approaches, and capacities to improve the well being of children. To build the capacity of community foundations to work with other community based, public, and business organizations in support of families and neighborhoods and their connections to opportunities, networks, and supports.


Anticipated outcomes
The outcome goals of this process include:

• An empirical knowledge base about lessons from current practice, including empirical evidence of what works to strengthen families in tough neighborhoods and greater self-understanding of individual community foundation’s past grantmaking accomplishments
• Clarification of potential outcome goals regarding children, families, and neighborhoods and a critical understanding of alternative strategies to achieve them
• Community foundation practices and structures that are increasingly aligned with the foundation's outcome goals regarding children, families, and neighborhoods
• A comparative perspective on the work and strategies of colleague community foundations
• Increased capacity and tools for data collection and analysis to inform planning for outcome-oriented strategies to support children, families and neighborhoods
• Strategies and increased capacity to measure outcomes and evaluate community foundation practice and the effects of their work